A British composer's ambitious quest to premier a requiem in the highly atmospheric Abney Park cemetery by lantern light.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

A missing quarter

Today was meant to be split into four quarters, the first of
which was spent in Quarters Cafe, my local coffee joint, sending out copious
emails and texts messages about Four Colours, which was officially released
today. Or meant to be... more of that later.

Background chatter in the cafe was mostly about the wallaby
which has been spotted in Highgate cemetery. Quite how a wallaby has managed to
find its way there, I’m not sure. These crazy Highgate kids are probably rich
and daft enough to have bizarre pets like that, but you’d think one of them
might have reported a missing creature of that size. There are obviously several
gangs of wild wallabies living in the UK, mostly escapees from places like
Woburn Abbey. In fact, there’s a whole load of the creatures living near
Thaxted in Essex. My mother claims to have done several emergency stops for
them in the past, but in the middle of London? How does a wallaby hop, unnoticed,
to a graveyard in zone three? In order to reach the cemetery, he’ll have had to
have negotiated many roads. I’m intrigued.

I left the cafe at mid day and came home to rehearse the
lovely Carmen, first soprano from the Rebel Chorus. She wanted to go over her
lines in the Pepys Motet, which we start recording on Monday. It’s slightly
terrifying. I don’t feel at all ready. The music’s ready, but the session this
morning showed me how little I know all the individual internal parts. I was
mortified when Carmen walked in. The house looked so untidy. I’d thrown all
sorts of things into little piles and only managed to properly clean the
bathroom because I didn’t want her to think I was a complete slob!

I was meant to head into town in the third quarter of the
day to meet Jodie Prenger and the people from the Kaleidoscope charity who were
being interviewed by Ian Dale on LBC Radio. Unfortunately Ian was ill today,
and his producer rather incredibly decided the interview couldn’t take place
without him because Ian is gay, and the replacement presenter isn’t. What? So I
couldn’t talk to a black person about being black?! The hideous thing was that
Jodie had come all the way from Blackpool on a train specifically so that she
could do the interview face-to-face, and had to go all the way back home again
for absolutely no reason. I am absolutely livid at the decision and would very
much like to get to the bottom of why it happened.

I stayed at home, and saw Nathan briefly, who’d been
teaching all day in Watford. He disappeared to see the official premiere of
From Here to Eternity, and I stayed home to rehearse Matt, our new bass in the
Pepys Motet. I came rather unstuck during the rehearsal, particularly during
movement one, where there are a number of rather complicated rhythmic changes.
It felt rather like the blind leading the blind and I felt very bad that I wasn’t
able to be more helpful. My mind was still in an angry space about the fiasco
with Jodie and I kept wondering what I should do. Plainly it would be
inappropriate to go in guns blazing, but I just don’t understand how someone as
well-known and likeable as Jodie could be dropped so spectacularly at such a
late stage. She wanted to discuss something really important, and frankly, any
presenter could have prompted her to say the right things. I can’t imagine that
the producer, faced with the thought that Jodie was already in town to do the interview,
would have done anything other than make it happen in some way. But then again,
producers are not exactly renowned for their empathy. It’s all about the story
and nothing about the people who actually create the story. There must be a
logical and reasonable explanation. I genuinely hope that Ian Dale will be
mortified about what has happened, and do everything he can to smooth things
over on his return. It is an angry man who goes to sleep this evening!

About Me

Composer and television director. Recent works include: A Symphony for Yorkshire (winner of 3 RTS Awards and a Prix de Circom), Tyne and Wear Metro: The Musical (winner of a Gillard award), The Pepys Motet, The London Requiem, Songs from Hattersley, A1: The Road Musical (nominated for a Grierson Award), Watford Gap: The Musical, Coventry Market: The Musical (nominated for a SONY award and recipient of two Gillard awards) and Oranges and Lemons, which features every bell in every London church mentioned in the nursery rhyme.